Fourth-year students (IDEA Grad 2021) begin their practicums: Eight-week full-time placements with local companies across Vancouver
Capilano University's IDEA School of Design has always had a strong connection with the Vancouver creative industry.
We have deepened our involvement with our fourth-year practicums now in their fourth year. IDES 490 Industry Practicum, the final course in our Bachelor of Design program, is an eight-week full-time placement in a local company.
“This experiential learning course takes place primarily off campus. Students work within a studio/agency environment or with a personal mentor in a capacity related to visual communication. Students undergo a placement interview and both parties work to strict contractual guidelines that guide behaviour and learning in a professional environment. Students provide written reflection and a final report on their work experience.”
IDEA Grad 2021 began their in-person (and virtual) practicums this month with companies across Vancouver. Shown above: Naomi Evers (IDEA Grad 2021) at Porchlight Press.
Students are working in a wide range of branding, packaging, digital design, interactive, advertising, illustration, gaming, motion graphics, animation and retail in-house firms including 123w, Anenome Hug Interactive, Baro Drywear Jackets, Chairman Ting Industries Inc., Danica, Gamomo, If Communications, Jesters Animation, Little Mountain Animation, Metalab, Monday Creative, Pivot & Pilot, Porchlight Press, Pound & Grain, PS Brand, Rethink, Triumf and Will Creative.
Some highlights from their first two weeks
“My 4th-year design practicum has started, and I’m so excited to leave my apartment. I had been to Porchlight Press (a letterpress printing and design studio in East Van) two times for two different typesetting workshops. I absolutely loved the atmosphere. I am one of few people in my graduating class who leaves the house for their practicum. The whole Porchlight team is only four people. With masks and plenty of room between everyone’s workstations, everything is Covid safe. I’ve learned a few new stations in the shop. Felicity taught me how to make a Pantone colour to go on the press. To create the right ink colour, you need to mix the right percentages of base colours. I also learned how to use the stapling machine for bookbinding. ”
“This marks the beginning of my eight-week practicum at Jester’s Animation. I’ve never worked in Animation before, but I was very keen to try it out. For my first week I got to jump right into the undisclosed project. Doing some character sketches, and storyboards. I also warmed up with some practice paintings to get used to the Wacom. I got to spend a lot of time the first week assisting with “design” which involved drawing elements in Photoshop before they get converted for use in Harmony. It’s been an exciting week. I think the hardest part of story boarding was keeping the work loose and unfinished. For next week, I’m hoping to finish the rig I started, so I can see it in the final production.”
“I started my practicum this week! Pivot & Pilot (P&P) is a design agency in Vancouver. The team is a small and cozy family of six. We have been primarily communicating through Slack and Google Meet. I like that they do morning check-ins because it keeps everyone on track, you get an idea of what other people are working on, and it’s just nice to see everyone’s face at least once during the day! At the beginning of the week, I was working on designing social media content for an upcoming podcast that will be released soon. A cool thing I learned was how to make moving soundwave forms in After Effects that syncs with the audio. Week 2 started with helping writing and perfecting all the copy for a restaurant website we are working on. It was a fun process trying to craft the perfect voice for parts of the site – from hero headings to FAQ answers! I’ve come to realize that I really, really enjoy site design.”
“My current work set up.” — Sara Nguyen
“The 123w group has a great atmosphere that makes me feel welcome. One project involves ideating social media animations, another is finding art direction photo examples for an alcohol TV advertisement, and the last one is updating the photos on a client’s website. John Larigakis (IDEA Grad 2010) is my support mentor, and I’m working on a project with Kim Ridgewell (IDEA Grad 2007). IDEA represents, woohoo! I’m hoping to get at least 50 ideas out before my critique session. Holding 30–45 minute sprints have been helping me keep track of my time and remind me to take breaks. I am glad I was just thrown in the deep with the projects; now I can see how I float. Seeing the final presentation will teach me how to go about future art direction projects like these. Incredibly, I might be able to hire illustrators I find and recommend! I got some tips on presenting my work. If you can’t explain your project in one sentence, you don’t know your concept well enough. IDEA grad, Taeyeon Kim was lovely. My biggest takeaways from our convo were that it’s essential to have a concept, always keep your progress sketches to show, and ask for portfolio reviews (especially if you’re a new grad)!!”
Sara Nguyen
“It was a solid first day. While I would much prefer to be present in an office setting–especially with such a cool bunch–at least everything has come to run very smoothly over the net by now. Everyone uses GIF’s in literally every single email it’s hilarious. Hoping there is a ton of work on the horizon for them and I can make a good impression, I’d love a position there!! The first project I worked on in week one keeps on popping back up. New requests keep popping up and they are moving in a direction that went against our creative vision. Definitely a bit of a dance in finding that middle ground between what they want and what they need! We had our second web design workshop with a cool freelancer. A lot of it was a refresh for me but he had some interesting theories and takeaways about the future of web design.”
Candid capture of the daily creative team check-in at Will, this was just as people were entering but there’s a few IDEA alumni to be spotted, most recently is Noah (center) who must have done something right during his practicum last year because an extended contract turned into full time employment!! WAY TO GO NOAH!!
“I began my much-anticipated Practicum with Little Mountain Animation. I’ve been working alongside Nathan Thomas, Founder and extremely talented VFX animator (I don’t know how I got so lucky). Our goal for this Practicum would be to create an episode of their animated short series, Big Dinosaur. I’ve had very little experience working with 3D and animation, so I’m a bit nervous. We worked together on ideation and writing. I came up with a slide deck with 20-30 ideas, some more fleshed out than others, and we narrowed down the list to 3 potential episodes. We ideated some more and then wrote fleshed-out scripts for each of the ideas. I’ve been working on sketches, scenes and figuring out the story beats as well. The plot we agreed on is about Big Dinosaur imagining what it would be like to go into space after he and his friend Bug Bug see a shooting star one night. I think storyboarding is something I might be interested in working on at future animation studios, as I think it fits my skill set very well.”
“TRIUMF is Canada’s particle accelerator centre. Their vision is for Canada to lead in science, discovery, and innovation, improving lives and building a better world. My goal is to help TRIUMF polish their “Discover Our Lab” site that they are creating. As a designer, I am not closely familiar with coding, so tools like WordPress and Elementor that TRIUMF has exposed me to make it much easier for me to execute my visions. I’ve started by tackling the current “Accelerators 101” page polishing. I made sure the typography styles were consistent throughout the page. I have also fixed sizing and padding issues of the general layout. I am glad that throughout my practicum with TRIUMF, I get to practice my skills at different tasks and work with new software programs like Elementor.”
“What a beautiful bunch of people. Day two I started off by taking some reference photos of myself for a kids book I was doing thumbnails for which the team got a good kick out of. I have sat in on many client meetings now, and I even got to add my input to one! I have been learning a variety of skills. Most of the work I have been doing so far has been thumbnails for projects, putting together mood boards, designing packaging labels, illustrating stickers, brainstorming concepts, and helping people get various things done before their deadlines. What fun! There are a couple of projects that I have had the privilege to work on that will be in the real world soon! It feels very surreal to have my work out in the real world!”
“Reference photos of myself for a kids book” by Alison Johnstone
These placements will give our students' some great hands-on experience to prepare them for the job market. It will give their résumés a boost and provide some excellent professional references, a few may even end in job offers.
